Expektoration Live

Gold Dust Media;
2010

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Part of the appeal of a live album is that it's raw, real, truthful-- musicians performing without the safety net or assistance of a studio. So it's unusual to be confronted with one, and the first question that comes to mind is, "Is this really a live performance at all?" DOOM has a purported tendency to send phony "Doomposters" to perform in his place at shows-- and a reputation as a terrible performer when he does show up-- so he must have titanium balls to even consider putting out a concert album. So Expektoration's validity has been called into question, particularly since it sounds so much better than his other concert release, 2005's Live from Planet X. That record is so bad that you know it's legit.

Expektoration does feel like the genuine article though-- the crowd at least is real (right off the bat, they shout along with the "Super!" drops in "Hoe Cakes")-- and there's a feel to this album that transcends the redundant and sloppy nature of your typicalbarrel-scraping live rap album. One of the probable reasons people thought this was a phony show is this is a ridiculously clean-sounding recording, a soundboard job where the audience and the ambient sound pop in only when they're needed. Sure, you can occasionally hear another voice interject a phrase in the background, one of those stage-sharing dudes that may or may not be a weedcarrier and traditionally is there to pick up the slack if an MC doesn't feel like finishing a line. But that stuff's minimized on this album-- for the most part, it's all DOOM, and he sounds a damn sight more dedicated here than his sullied reputation might have you assume.

If you want preliminary evidence, just take note of how diabolically energized DOOM's voice sounds compared to the cool, calculated, almost deadpan muttering of the studio versions. That laidback demeanor sounded great on record, but the dynamics of a live show are different enough that he'd need to crank things up in the liveliness department to really engage with the audience. His success is established in short order, as MM.. Food? highlights "Hoe Cakes", "Kon Queso", and "One Beer" are pushed up from blunted stream-of-consciousness raps to animated diatribes. He snarls and chortles, he sells his own punchlines, he gets jovial one moment and guttural the next, he turns periods and ellipses into exclamation points. Even his banter slays; at the threat of a stage-dive moment, he warns the crowd, "You don't want me to do that shit, I'm a good 220!"

And yet it's hard to shake the feeling that something's up the longer this set goes. It's not just the inexplicable decision to string all the songs together, presenting this set as a two-half, two-track performance with a brief "Star Trek"-quoting skit/intermission squeezed in the middle. That does make a kind of sense-- the show's paced briskly, and it's probably fair to have the listener experience the same uninterrupted event as the audience. But eventually you'll come around to the big question: "When was this recorded?" The set's heavy on prime mid-career material from Madvillainy, Vaudeville Villain, and Take Me to Your Leader, not to mention 1999's legendary Operation: Doomsday-- but nothing from Born Like This or Danger Doom. In fact, none of the songs performed on Expektoration postdate MM.. Food?, DOOM refers to crunk as "that new shit," and he actually shares the stage with his now-estranged former collaborator MF Grimm, who dropped the DOOM-baiting dis track "Book of Daniel" four years ago.

In fact, DOOM's between-songs mention of a food drive concurrent with the show is the big giveaway, since fans who shelled out for the MM.. Food? deluxe reissue back in 2007 were given a DVD of highlights from his '04 MM.. Food? Drive tour. And the album's notes, not to mention the promotional push, tellingly gloss this over. In light of that fact, as well as Expektoration's Operation: Doomsday-heavy second half and its subsequent overlap with the similarly inclined Live from Planet X, this is almost insultingly deceptive. That's a shame: Expektoration is DOOM at his live-show peak, and people who go into this knowing this set's from six years back might feel a bit more charitable. But releasing a concert album with an "Act 1"/"Intermission"/"Act 2" structure instead of a telltale tracklist, and obscuring its actual place in a years-distant history? That's not supervillainy, that's antagonism.